


it would only be polite to give the aliens five minutes to get ready

by CordeliaRose



Series: Morey Appreciation Week 2020 [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, Morey Appreciation Week, Morey Appreciation Week 2020, Possible doppelgangers, Surprises, morey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-17 17:20:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28978056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CordeliaRose/pseuds/CordeliaRose
Summary: Mason’s sure of one thing - Corey’s been replaced with an alien doppelganger.For Morey Appreciation Week 2020, Day #2: A Shock or Surprise.
Relationships: Corey Bryant/Mason Hewitt
Series: Morey Appreciation Week 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2123970
Comments: 7
Kudos: 10





	it would only be polite to give the aliens five minutes to get ready

**Author's Note:**

> day 2!  
> thank you guys for your kudos & comments thus far. much love to you all <3

“So, it’s my birthday soon.” As far as statements go, it’s fairly innocuous, and Mason isn’t entirely sure why it causes Corey to spin around so fast he loses his centre of gravity and falls into a row of lockers with an echoing clang.

“It sure is,” Corey says, in a voice just a touch too loud, pushing himself away from his metal assailants and standing just a touch too stiffly.

Mason eyes him for a second, wondering if this is an Imposter Corey. “I was thinking we could go out somewhere,” he suggests, “like to the cinema, then get something to eat?”

“No!” Corey shouts immediately, winces as the students around them start and stare, then smiles – or tries to, it’s kind of a grimace. “No, let’s just hang out at yours. We could watch a film there, you know? So much cheaper!”

“I – yeah, sure – are you feeling okay?”

Corey suddenly becomes immensely focused on the textbook and folders he’s carrying. “I’m fine,” he says in the most unconvincing tone Mason has ever heard. “I just think birthdays are so overrated! It’s just another year of your life, another year closer to death, why do we waste money going out and celebrating them?”

Before Mason has the chance to interrogate this strange clone that someone has clearly made of his boyfriend, they reach the classroom for Corey’s next period and he dashes inside, throwing a hasty, “Love you!” over his shoulder as he scurries to his desk. Mason, more than a little baffled, carries on to his own lesson, down in the chemistry lab.

He takes a seat next to Liam, who is flipping through his notes and mumbling feverishly to himself, and asks, “Are there any supernatural creatures that make clones of people?”

Liam barely spares him a confused glance. “You’ve read more of the bestiary than me,” he points out, “but no. I mean, wendigos can imitate voices, but that’s it. Why?”

“I think Corey is a doppelganger. He’s acting super weird.”

Liam does finally bestow his full attention upon him then, dropping a highlighter onto his notebook and straightening on his stool. “Doesn’t Corey always act super weird?”

He has a point. “Not like this,” Mason sighs. “I was just saying we should do something for my birthday, and he freaked out.”

Liam nods sagely. “He probably really hates birthdays,” he says, like this is the answer to whatever just happened.

“He didn’t hate them last month, when we threw that party for Malia.”

“A month is a long time. People change. People grow.” Liam claps his hand on Mason’s shoulder and stares at him with an uncomfortable intensity. “Maybe don’t bring it up again and see how he is otherwise.”

For once, Liam has given some halfway decent advice, and Mason hates it. Usually Liam’s plans are like, ‘let’s go spy on them and see if they have a secret double life’, or ‘I’ll pretend to be a therapist and say he won a free session in a radio competition’, and then Mason gets to be the mature one who shoots them down and suggests something more sensible, and then they end up with some weird combination of their two ideas that rarely works but is ridiculously fun. “Yeah, okay,” Mason acquiesces. “I’ll give it a few days.”

“Great. Now, help me finish the homework before the lesson starts.”

* * *

The thing is, though, that Corey doesn’t get any less weird. Mason doesn’t bring up his birthday again, but Corey is twitchy and strange and jumps three feet into the air whenever he’s mildly startled by anything. He talks to Mason in clipped, strangled sentences and looks vaguely panicked the entire time, and once he cuts himself off halfway through a word and just sprints away. When they meet again later, at lunch, he offers no explanation for his earlier behaviour and starts rambling desperately about the ozone layer.

Mason is so, so, so utterly confused by what’s going on, and he spent a good few months discovering, one after the other, that two of his close friends were assassins, the supernatural world did exist, and that his best friend was part of that supernatural world. He always thought that would be the most baffling period of his life, but here he is.

Dutifully, though, he doesn’t ever mention his birthday again, despite the fact that it’s on Saturday and it’s now Friday, just in case that was the trigger for Corey’s apparent breakdown. Which nobody else seems to care about, for some reason. Everyone’s just totally chill with the fact that their friend and pack member has tumbled down uncanny valley to become a strange robot shadow of his former self. Mason isn’t letting go of the doppelganger theory, or maybe that he’s in a strange, prolonged nightmare or fugue state.

At the end of Friday, though, something shifts. Mason is sifting through his locker, retrieving the books he needs for homework and shoving in the ones he doesn’t, when Liam and Corey approach. Theo is wandering behind them, frowning at the pair as they hiss between themselves furiously. Mason can see them out of the corner of his eye, but apparently they haven’t realised as they continue to exchange harried whispers and point towards him.

Liam peels off just before they’re within earshot and scurries off in the opposite direction. He grabs Theo as he goes and drags them both towards the east exit of the school; Corey approaches in the same way that an android trying to imitate a human might, with carefully measured steps and a manufactured expression of nonchalance.

“I need to go to the store,” he announces when he reaches Mason’s side, leaning against the lockers in a faux-casual pose that he has never adopted before.

“Sure,” Mason agrees, because he drives Corey home most days and they go through town anyway.

“Not the local one, I need the Walmart out in Corona.”

“Uh, okay.” Mason does some quick calculations – it’s Friday but it’s not quite rush hour so they should be able to make it there in fifteen, another fifteen back plus whatever time Corey takes in the shop – it won’t delay them by more than an hour, no problem. “What do you need to get?”

“I’m collecting—” Corey sucks in an audible breath to cut himself off, glances around wildly, and starts again. “I am collecting…some pastries. For my neighbour.”

Like a sword used in many, many battles, Mason has been dulled over time to just accept Corey’s new abnormal state of being. What just happened barely even registers on his weird-o-meter. “Sure, let’s go.”

* * *

Mason offers to come into the Walmart with Corey, but he refuses with an almost belligerent, “You wait here,” and leaves him in the car while he runs inside. Literally runs.

While he’s waiting, he texts Liam, but gets no reply. Then his mom; Fridays are a half-day at work for her, so by the time he gets out of school she’s usually already at home. But she doesn’t reply either, so he just watches a YouTube video about nuclear fusion to pass the time.

Corey emerges after twenty minutes, clutching a massive white box to his chest like it contains the Ark of the Covenant, and miraculously he’s become twice as nervy as before. He clicks his seatbelt into place and sits ramrod straight all the drive back into Beacon Hills, mute, until Mason indicates to take the turn into Corey’s road and he suddenly snaps, “No, let’s go back to yours.”

Mason cancels the indicator and asks, “Are you okay? You’ve been really weird this past week.”

“I am fine,” Corey says indignantly. “You’re the one who’s been weird!”

“Have I?”

Corey deflates and slumps in the passenger seat. “No. It was me. I was just – it doesn’t matter, you’ll see in a minute.”

Mason turns onto his road. He, quite truthfully, does not have the faintest clue what is happening. Not right now, not in his life, not in Corey’s life. But presumably, he’s going to see in a minute – maybe this is when the clone-creating aliens are going to reveal themselves! Perhaps the entirety of Beacon Hills has been replicated, their true selves stashed away in a secure containment facility, and he’s the only one left.

The thought preoccupies him until they reach the Hewitts’, when Corey screeches at him to wait in the car for five minutes before coming in and then throws himself through the front door. 

Well, it would only be polite to give the aliens five minutes to get ready, Mason supposes. He obeys, but when four and a half minutes have passed he slides out of the seat and grabs his taser from the trunk, shoving it in his back pocket just in case.

Fully expecting nothing less than a probing lab erected in his living room, Mason shoulders open the front door to a fleeting second of darkness, before light suddenly floods the atrium and – “Surprise!” shout a dozen mingled voices.

Blinking against the sudden onslaught on light and sound, it takes Mason a second to process that his house isn’t full of aliens, but his family and friends. A banner proclaiming Happy Birthday! is strung from the ceiling, and the small table that usually houses their keys is now weighed down by a huge cake, studded with unlit candles.

Everyone – his parents, grandparents, most of the pack – is standing in around that table, adorned with foil party hats. A few of them set off small confetti cannons as the rest of them cheer.

Mason has to laugh, toeing off his shoes as he comes in. A lot of the past week is making sense – Corey can deflect attention away from himself and his problems as easily as his heart beats, but when it comes to keeping secrets from Mason, he’s hopeless. It was probably tearing him up inside not to just blurt out we’re throwing you a surprise party on Friday every time they were in each other’s company.

After greetings, and laughter, and assurances that he had no idea they were planning this, they move into the living room – decorated with banners, balloons, and streamers – to dance and chat, and it’s only after Mason has circled the room to thank members of the pack and his grandparents for coming that he gets to finally have a semi-private moment with Corey.

“I can’t believe you kept this a secret,” he pants, flopping down on the sofa next to his boyfriend following an enthusiastic dance with an equally enthusiastic Malia. He suspects she’s had several of the sugary snacks laid out for them, and probably a few glasses of the champagne too.

Corey, clutching a half-full glass and watching Liam trying to coax an unimpressed Theo into dancing with him, grins and leans into him. “I hated it,” he admits, “every time I saw you, I just wanted to say it. I almost did a few times.” He shudders. “I hate keeping secrets from you.”

“Well, I appreciate it. I love this.” He does. His elderly grandparents haven’t been partaking in the dance battles of the pack, but their presence is warm and comforting even from the other side of the room. His mom’s been topping up glasses and his dad oversees the food, trotting out of the kitchen with fresh plates every so often, and the scene is an oddly harmonious mix of relaxed, domestic comfort with the high-energy escapades of the pack. It is, to quote Hannah Montana, the best of both worlds.

“Enjoy it. It’s not happening again.” Corey gulps down the rest of his champagne. “Unless they plan it without me. That was the most stressful week of my life.” He sets his glass down on the small end-table carefully and turns back, grinning. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” Before they can sneak off to make out somewhere, which would be a very awesome birthday present, the lights and music shut off and the cake – which Mason now realises is the product of the Walmart trip, and the contents of the white box that Corey guarded so zealously in the car – is produced, small flames bouncing atop the candles as everyone cheers and then launches into song. Nobody’s in time with anybody else, much less in tune, and he’s pretty sure that his grandma isn’t even singing the same song, and it’s so perfectly dysfunctional that Mason nearly tears up from the sheer joy of it all.

He blows out the candles as the pretentious grandfather clock in the dining room bellows out that it’s midnight, officially his birthday, and once everyone’s eaten a massive chunk of cake the party resumes in full swing. Corey, now on his third glass of champagne (Mason’s mom had laced specific bottles with wolfsbane and one specially for Corey with juniper berries, she confessed in a whisper, because everyone deserves to get drunk tonight), even lets himself be persuaded into dancing to a few fast songs and then a slower one.

His parents retire to bed shortly after his grandparents retreat to the guest bedrooms for the night, and the pack spend the next hour with the music on low and an empty champagne bottle picking out who’s turn it is in Truth or Dare. That quickly devolves into various people daring their partners into making out with them – Stiles and Lydia disappear into the conservatory at one point, and Theo practically carries Liam into the kitchen – and just as quickly, everyone crashes from the sugar high and the entire first floor of the Hewitt’s home is dotted with sprawled, comatose teenagers.

Mason curls up on the couch with Corey, alone but for a snoring Malia draped over the coffee table, where they exchange quiet conversation and progressively slower bouts of making out until they give in and drift off themselves. Mason’s fairly confident in declaring it the best birthday ever.

**Author's Note:**

> [please go here to visit the official morey appreciation tumblr that's running this morey appreciation week!](https://moreyappreciation.tumblr.com/)  
> and a big shoutout to idk-ilike5sos for beta'ing this for me! you can find her here on [ao3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/idk_ilike5sos/pseuds/idk_ilike5sos/) or [tumblr](https://idk-ilike5sos.tumblr.com/):)  
> you can also talk to me on [tumblr](https://cordelia---rose.tumblr.com/) or check out my [fandoms sideblog](https://cordeliarosebutfandoms.tumblr.com/)  
> and as always, kudos & comments are dearly appreciated <3


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